I can see we are going to enter into a long trail of correspondence on this one, but here goes. I will take your points in order and hopefully explain what goes on in the UK and how the ethical American model is not applicable.
Community involvement and the role of the amateur has a long tradition in the UK though in recent years regulation and those terrible twins Health and Safety have made participation more and more difficult. I can understand your wish to contrast this with the situation in your own country. It is a point of pride as you say that we can do this and be supported by like minded professionals more than willing to give up their time to ensure that amateurs have a role to play in understanding the archaeology of this nation. I was lucky enough to be able to help on a number of amateur excavations in the 70's as an undergraduate and the experience it gave me of procedures and the way of the archaeological world as it was then was valuable, so very far away from the commercial haste that it has all decended into now.
By the commercial world i was referring more to that of the developer which is both the feeder of the contract archaeologist and the destroyer of the archaeology they seeks to preserve by record. Now you have mentioned the commercial archaeolgical world i would add that this is not the panacea it was expected to be. Remember what is finally excavated is a compromise between cost and time with nearly all tenders awarded to the lowest bidder and all the pitfalls that brings with it. The quality of units varies greatly and as you say does the publication rate. However excavation is akin to looking at the plums in the archaeological pudding and sacrificing what is in between because it is either periferal to the main areas of interest or has been negotiated away by the intervention of the dreaded archaeological consultant. Now i will say little more on this aspect as i am sure i will be treading on some toes and besides there are many others on here who can better discuss these points !!!!
You seem to have a very selective view of the hobby of metal detecting in the UK and i mean that in the best possible way. Metal detecting has its merits and the expertise that has been developed by its practitioners. More and more this expertise is being harnessed by contracting units to aid recovery of metal work, but mostly within the excavation area and, because it is not a common condition applied by Development Control Archaeologists, the material that resides within the topsoil and subsoil machine strips is rarely looked at yet ask any competent detectorist where the majority of metal small finds will be and they will say in the spoil heaps.
I would argue that there is a huge loss of material from excavations simple because percentage values for excavation are set for each feature and so on and in this way stratified archaeology having been evaluated by sample is then destroyed when the developer moves in . Metal detection looks at the casual loss resource most of which exists in the homogenised ploughsoils and so lack any real context except in a areal sense. This is the very material which is machine excavated and dumped in the spoil heaps to uncover the stratified archaeology. As one archaeologists put it too me " we dont look for artefacts" when i mentioned the loss of material to the spoil and tellingly he was from a Scottish unit. If that is the opinion of some what is the problem with looking for unstratified items with a metal detector ?
Yes there are those who will seek to add items to the shoebox, but it is unfair to use the tarbrush approach to all. You may be unaware of the Portable Antiquities Scheme which was set up to record items before they ended up in that shoebox. It is not extant in Scotland and despite the inevitable comments from detractors it has been successful in what it does under what have always been difficult operating conditions from its various controllers and funders. Inevitably we still hear the charge from some axe grinders that detectorists are not recording their finds. The PAS cannot cope with what it receive presently because of resource implications so that is a very unfair accusation. As i have said before recording is the key to providing lots of data albeit in a random manner to add to the archaeological landscape. You cannot tell me that such data is not a component part of the desk top research carried out by units up and down the country. So yes i do argue that detecting and the information it produces is a valuable contribution. And yes their are those who will not follow the rules and not record finds or simply see using as metal detector as a way to make money - there are also some archaeologists that do not follow the rules as well.
Amateur excavations for profit - thats a new one and far from the truth. In England and Wales all non Treasure items belong to the landowner and so it is up to them to allow the decontexturalised material to be recovered and as their private property to be sold. That is the law of this land. Similarly as long as UK laws with respect to the sale and collecting of antiquities are followed it is allowed and i know it may not seem ok to the ethically challenged that is the real world we live in. The alternative as an autocratic state controlled system would be a smugglers paradise where the top class items are lost to record and never seen again whilst the lower grade material is simply melted down for its bullion value. Not the road i would like to see followed.
I would suggest that the biggest blunder archaeology ever made was trying to ban metal detecting in the 80's using a mix of lies, propaganda and elitism which simply backfired and little was reported or recorded. That is how the information was lost instead of realising that there was an opportunity for education and co-operation to secure data. That period lasted in many areas for 20 odd years and it was a shameful episode for all concerned. That is what i was meaning about experience which you lack and i mean that respectfully, by your limited knowledge of what has gone before and i suppose why we are where we are.
And on a final point just to stir things up : nighthawking was caused by archeological policies in the 1980' by putting in place negative access policies where ever they could without attempting to understand the opportunity they were presented with. Answers on a big postcard to ........
To be continued i am sure unless i get banned - sorry that ony happens on a certain tekkie forum for those who disagree with the operators. David wont do that will he ?
Community involvement and the role of the amateur has a long tradition in the UK though in recent years regulation and those terrible twins Health and Safety have made participation more and more difficult. I can understand your wish to contrast this with the situation in your own country. It is a point of pride as you say that we can do this and be supported by like minded professionals more than willing to give up their time to ensure that amateurs have a role to play in understanding the archaeology of this nation. I was lucky enough to be able to help on a number of amateur excavations in the 70's as an undergraduate and the experience it gave me of procedures and the way of the archaeological world as it was then was valuable, so very far away from the commercial haste that it has all decended into now.
By the commercial world i was referring more to that of the developer which is both the feeder of the contract archaeologist and the destroyer of the archaeology they seeks to preserve by record. Now you have mentioned the commercial archaeolgical world i would add that this is not the panacea it was expected to be. Remember what is finally excavated is a compromise between cost and time with nearly all tenders awarded to the lowest bidder and all the pitfalls that brings with it. The quality of units varies greatly and as you say does the publication rate. However excavation is akin to looking at the plums in the archaeological pudding and sacrificing what is in between because it is either periferal to the main areas of interest or has been negotiated away by the intervention of the dreaded archaeological consultant. Now i will say little more on this aspect as i am sure i will be treading on some toes and besides there are many others on here who can better discuss these points !!!!
You seem to have a very selective view of the hobby of metal detecting in the UK and i mean that in the best possible way. Metal detecting has its merits and the expertise that has been developed by its practitioners. More and more this expertise is being harnessed by contracting units to aid recovery of metal work, but mostly within the excavation area and, because it is not a common condition applied by Development Control Archaeologists, the material that resides within the topsoil and subsoil machine strips is rarely looked at yet ask any competent detectorist where the majority of metal small finds will be and they will say in the spoil heaps.
I would argue that there is a huge loss of material from excavations simple because percentage values for excavation are set for each feature and so on and in this way stratified archaeology having been evaluated by sample is then destroyed when the developer moves in . Metal detection looks at the casual loss resource most of which exists in the homogenised ploughsoils and so lack any real context except in a areal sense. This is the very material which is machine excavated and dumped in the spoil heaps to uncover the stratified archaeology. As one archaeologists put it too me " we dont look for artefacts" when i mentioned the loss of material to the spoil and tellingly he was from a Scottish unit. If that is the opinion of some what is the problem with looking for unstratified items with a metal detector ?
Yes there are those who will seek to add items to the shoebox, but it is unfair to use the tarbrush approach to all. You may be unaware of the Portable Antiquities Scheme which was set up to record items before they ended up in that shoebox. It is not extant in Scotland and despite the inevitable comments from detractors it has been successful in what it does under what have always been difficult operating conditions from its various controllers and funders. Inevitably we still hear the charge from some axe grinders that detectorists are not recording their finds. The PAS cannot cope with what it receive presently because of resource implications so that is a very unfair accusation. As i have said before recording is the key to providing lots of data albeit in a random manner to add to the archaeological landscape. You cannot tell me that such data is not a component part of the desk top research carried out by units up and down the country. So yes i do argue that detecting and the information it produces is a valuable contribution. And yes their are those who will not follow the rules and not record finds or simply see using as metal detector as a way to make money - there are also some archaeologists that do not follow the rules as well.
Amateur excavations for profit - thats a new one and far from the truth. In England and Wales all non Treasure items belong to the landowner and so it is up to them to allow the decontexturalised material to be recovered and as their private property to be sold. That is the law of this land. Similarly as long as UK laws with respect to the sale and collecting of antiquities are followed it is allowed and i know it may not seem ok to the ethically challenged that is the real world we live in. The alternative as an autocratic state controlled system would be a smugglers paradise where the top class items are lost to record and never seen again whilst the lower grade material is simply melted down for its bullion value. Not the road i would like to see followed.
I would suggest that the biggest blunder archaeology ever made was trying to ban metal detecting in the 80's using a mix of lies, propaganda and elitism which simply backfired and little was reported or recorded. That is how the information was lost instead of realising that there was an opportunity for education and co-operation to secure data. That period lasted in many areas for 20 odd years and it was a shameful episode for all concerned. That is what i was meaning about experience which you lack and i mean that respectfully, by your limited knowledge of what has gone before and i suppose why we are where we are.
And on a final point just to stir things up : nighthawking was caused by archeological policies in the 1980' by putting in place negative access policies where ever they could without attempting to understand the opportunity they were presented with. Answers on a big postcard to ........
To be continued i am sure unless i get banned - sorry that ony happens on a certain tekkie forum for those who disagree with the operators. David wont do that will he ?